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Public Universities Relying More on Tuition Than State Money

COLUMBIA, S.C. — For bargain-hunting families, state colleges and universities, supported by tax money, have long been a haven from the high cost of private education.

But tuition bargains are fading as the nation’s public universities undergo a profound shift, accelerated by the recession. In most states, it is now tuition payments, not state appropriations, that cover most of the budget.

The shift has been an unwelcome surprise to Ashley Murphy, a sophomore at the University of South Carolina. When she and her twin sister, Allison, picked their colleges two years ago, costs were definitely an issue, since they are putting themselves through college.

Ashley said she chose the state flagship both because she believed that public universities offered the best education and because she thought it would be cheaper than Allison’s choice, a small Baptist university where the published tuition is twice as much.

But thanks to generous financial aid, Allison is paying less. And even with a campus job and a $5,000 state scholarship, Ashley struggles to make ends meet, worries about her student loans and is increasingly nervous about tuition increases.

“The whole thing is kind of scary, for somebody like me who’s paying for college myself,” said Ms. Murphy, who plans to be a teacher. “I turn 20 tomorrow, I’m already in debt, and if tuition goes up again next year, I’ll be in an even worse position.”

According to the Delta Cost Project, most of the nation’s public research universities had more than half their costs paid by tuition in 2008, and other four-year public institutions were hovering near the 50 percent mark. With three more years of tuition increases, they, too, have probably passed it, said Jane V. Wellman, executive director of the project, leaving only community colleges as mostly state-financed.

And the increasing dependence on tuition has disturbing implications for access to higher education, she said.

“In the next three or four years, we’re going to have more students who are spilling out the bottom, priced out of the expensive institutions,” Ms. Wellman said. “We’re going to be rationing opportunity. We’re moving in that direction fairly rapidly.”

Given that states still provide some $80 billion for higher education, some education policy experts say it is wrong to think of public universities as privatized. But they acknowledge that a fundamental reordering is under way — and that the era of affordable four-year public universities, heavily subsidized by the state, may be over.

“Something important is happening here,” said Pat Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. “I wouldn’t call it privatization, a word often used by presidents of public institutions who want a blank check on raising tuition. But with the shift toward more student funding, you have to wonder who owns these places — the students, because they’re paying the majority, or the state, which has invested hundreds of years in the physical plant and the brand?”

The burden on students is likely to keep growing. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 30 states face shortfalls of at least 10 percent of their budgets next year. And given the difficulties of cutting costs for Medicaid or K-12 schools, which get the biggest chunk of state budgets, appropriations for higher education are likely to shrivel further, leaving public universities ever more dependent on tuition money.

The University of South Carolina has lost almost half of its state appropriations in the last three years, gets only about a quarter of its education budget from the state and is expecting another round of deep cuts next year.

“We still have our public mission, but at this point, we have more of a private funding model,” said Michael Amiridis, the provost.

More states may soon find themselves in a similar position. In California, where tuition has been raised by 30 percent in the last two years — and where out-of-state tuition now tops $50,000, about the same as an elite private university — the governor has proposed cutting state support for the University of California by $500 million for the next fiscal year.

“If approved, this budget will mean that for the first time in our long history, tuition paid by University of California students and their families will exceed the state’s contribution to the core fund,” Mark Yudof, the president of the University of California system, told the Board of Regents. “For those who believe what we provide is a public good, not a private one, this is a sad threshold to cross.”

In Texas, legislators have proposed closing four community colleges and ending financial aid for freshmen. In Georgia, the popular Hope scholarships are likely to be slashed. In Arizona, the governor has proposed cutting financing for community colleges by half, and for four-year universities by 20 percent.

In state after state, tuition and class size are rising, jobs are being eliminated, maintenance is being deferred and the number of nonresident students, who pay higher tuition, is increasing.

“The difference between this downturn and others in the past is that this time I don’t think higher education will be able to recover the ground it’s lost,” said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see that money coming back. And with tuition already out of reach for many folks, I don’t think there’s much ability to keep raising it.”

At the University of South Carolina, budget cuts have already pushed tuition to $9,786, more than double what it was a decade ago and well above both the national and regional averages.

“I think we’re about at the maximum tuition South Carolina parents will pay,” said Ed Walton, the associate vice president for operations. “If the strategy of shrinking state government till it drowns in the bathtub worked, we’d be rich. But as it is, something’s going to have to go as we dwindle down from here, and I don’t know what more that something will be.”

Ms. Murphy feels the budget strains both as a student and as a university employee. “My campus job just had a four-hour meeting Sunday where they told us they wouldn’t be able to hire as many people for the information center,” she said. “We used to have three people on a shift, but now, sometimes, it’s just one.”

Education officials in South Carolina say their best hope of maintaining financing is convincing the state of the importance of higher education in producing workers who will thrive in the knowledge economy, an argument that has taken hold in North Carolina, where per-student appropriations are about twice as much.

But South Carolina’s legislators are focusing their attention — and ire — on the tuition increases. This month, the day after the new governor, Nikki Haley, was inaugurated, the House Ways and Means Committee met for a budget briefing from the programs that get the most state support.

Garrison Walters, director of the Commission on Higher Education, made his case that higher education could help drive the state’s economy.

But the legislators wanted to talk about tuition.

“You say we’re not making competitive investment in higher education, but how would you answer that you all are not being responsive to the needs of the state, when you increase tuition?” one legislator said.

Another said, “If people can’t afford it, what good is it?”

A version of this article appears in print on January 24, 2011, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Students, Not States, Are Now Paying More to Cover Costs for Public Universities. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe